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IF anyone ever says that being stateside in the military isn’t hazardous, they weren’t listening to the news today as five service members — a Marine, an airman and three soldiers — perished in separate incidents.

A pilot with the elite flying team, the Blue Angels, died today when his plane crashed. His F/A-18 crashed during a practice session for an air show outside of Nashville. From Stripes:

The Navy says the pilot was beginning to take off during an afternoon practice session when the crash happened. The team is scheduled to perform at an air show this weekend. The pilot is not being identified until next of kin are notified. Five other F/A-18 jets landed safely moments later.

In Colorado, the Thunderbirds had just finished their traditional performance at commencement for Air Force Academy cadets, screaming overhead just as the graduating officers tossed their white hats skyward.

The jets then did multiple fly-bys over the academy’s football stadium, where the ceremony took place, blasting by in tight formations or looping high overhead.

So far, there doesn’t appear to be a cause for either crash. Thoughts and prayers go out to both teams and to all members of the Navy and the Air Force. Just horrible.

Three soldiers have died and six others are missing after their Light Medium Tactical Vehicle overturned at a low-water crossing on Fort Hood, Texas.

Fort Hood emergency personnel responded to a call for a swift-water rescue at 11:20 a.m. Thursday after the LMTV got stuck at the Owl Creek Tactical low-water crossing and East Range Road, according to information from Fort Hood.

On February 29, 2016, President Barack Obama will present the Medal of Honor to Senior Chief Special Warfare Operator Edward Byers, U.S. Navy. Senior Chief Byers will receive the Medal of Honor for his courageous actions while serving as part of a team that rescued an American civilian being held hostage in Afghanistan on December 8-9, 2012.

Senior Chief Byers will be the eleventh living service member to be awarded the Medal of Honor for actions in Afghanistan. He and his family will join the President at the White House to commemorate his example of selfless service.

Byers is a senior chief in the U.S. Navy who’s job rating is a navy corpsman. He was working with 2nd Marines before he opted to enter BUD/S training, according to a bio from the White House. He was assigned to SEAL Team 6. Yes, that SEAL Team 6. What’s interesting about this announcement is that in most cases, they will tell you what a person did. Here it is super vague. Here’s a blurb from USA Today that tries to explain:

But even with the announcement of his Medal of Honor, much about the mission — and Byers’ role in it — remains secret. While the White House usually gives a much more detailed account of what a service member has done to be awarded the Medal of Honor, Byers commendation cites only “his courageous actions while serving as part of a team that rescued an American civilian being held hostage in Afghanistan, December 8-9, 2012.”

A SEAL team member died on that trip. For more on the raid, read the USA Today story which is linked to above. Here’s a blast blurb:

Only five Navy SEALs have ever been awarded the Medal of Honor, three in Vietnam and one each — posthumously — for actions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Byers is the first living sailor to be awarded the Medal of Honor since 1998, when President Bill Clinton awarded one retroactively for action in the Vietnam war.

I do this every year and love it every time I write about it. But this year, here’s the official press release from the NORAD nerve center.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Nov. 30, 2015

NORAD celebrates 60 years tracking Santa

PETERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Colo. — The North American Aerospace Defense Command is celebrating the 60th Anniversary of tracking Santa’s yuletide journey! The NORAD Tracks Santa website, www.noradsanta.org, launching Dec 1, features Santa’s North Pole Village, which includes a holiday countdown, games, activities, and more. The website is available in eight languages: English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, and Chinese.

Official NORAD Tracks Santa apps are also available in the Windows, Apple and Google Play stores, so parents and children can countdown the days until Santa’s launch on their smart phones and tablets! Tracking opportunities are also offered on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Google+. Santa followers just need to type “@noradsanta” into each search engine to get started.

Also new this year, the website features the NORAD Headquarters in the North Pole Village, and highlights of the program over the past 60 years.

Starting at 12:01 a.m. MST (2:01 a.m. EST) on Dec. 24, website visitors can watch Santa make preparations for his flight. NORAD’s “Santa Cams” will stream videos on the website as Santa makes his way over various locations. Then, at 4 a.m. MST (6 a.m. EST), trackers worldwide can speak with a live phone operator to inquire as to Santa’s whereabouts by dialing the toll-free number 1-877-Hi-NORAD (1-877-446-6723) or by sending an email to noradtrackssanta@outlook.com. Any time on Dec. 24, Windows Phone users can ask Cortana for Santa’s location, and OnStar subscribers can press the OnStar button in their vehicles to locate Santa.

NORAD Tracks Santa is truly a global experience, delighting generations of families everywhere. This is due, in large part, to the efforts and services of numerous program contributors.

And once again, the jolly old elf is zooming around the world. He’s avoiding SAM sites in Syria and in the Ukraine through high-tech stealth and well, super fast speed. But don’t worry, the kids in those areas are still taken care of. Go on with your bad self, Santa.

“The President has authorized a small complement—fewer than 50—of U.S.Special Operations Forces (SOF) to deploy to northern Syria, where they will help coordinate local ground forces and Coalition efforts to counter ISIL,” the official told Defense One in a statement.

More close air-support A-10 “Warthog” planes are on the way, as are an increase in F-15 fighter jets to Incirlik Airbase in Turkey. A small contingent of A-10s already arrived to Incirlik less than two weeks ago, the Pentagon said on Oct. 20.

Okay. Let’s think about this. We have already got a few thousand “advisers” in Iraq where they are not supposed to be engaged in combat though… one Delta operator was just killed in a firefight which, by any definition, is combat. So So this an escalation or a continuation of the White House’s plan to fight ISIS. Obama never ruled out sending people over there; he just said there would be no combat operations. So what is combat to the White House? From the Washington Post:

Obama has also said he will step up consultations with Prime Minister Haider al Abadi about establishing a Special Operations task force to target Islamic State leaders in Iraq. The move was foreshadowed earlier this week by Defense Secretary Ashton Carter who told lawmakers that the military’s elite counterterrorism forces would increase the pace of raids like the one in northern Iraq that freed as many as 70 prisoners being held by the Islamic State and resulted in the death of Army Master Sgt. Joshua L. Wheeler.

And what does the Air Force think about their ugly duckling, the A-10, getting so much love. Remember, they are trying to kill the plane, saying it’s obsolete in the modern age. Okay, not completely. They say they need to cut costs and the A-10 being a single mission plane isn’t appropriate for the modern battlefield. Whatever.

The groups that they’ll likely be helping — Kurds and the Syrian Democratic Forces — also tell us something very important about the mission. These groups are currently pressing ISIS near Raqqa, a city in northeastern Syria and the caliphate’s de facto capital. On Tuesday, Secretary of Defense Ash Carter identified retaking Raqqa as one of three central efforts in US strategy against ISIS, along with a similar effort against the Iraqi city of Ramadi and special forces raids.

This makes a degree of sense, given that ISIS is on the defensive near Raqqa. The Syrian city is “obviously central to Daesh’s holdings,” Noah Bonsey, a senior Syria analyst at the International Crisis Group, told me (using an Arabic term for ISIS) on Tuesday. “It’s operated as something of a de facto capital, it’s central to the Daesh narrative, and there’s also resources nearby.”

It appears that four Marines were killed in two separate attacks there at a recruiting stations. From the Chattanooga paper:

Four members of the military were killed in two attacks on military centers in separate parts of Chattanooga by a unknown gunman, leading to lockdowns at local hospitals as well as the Army Recruiting Center on Lee highway as well as the Naval and Marine Reserve Center at the Chattanooga Riverpark, where shots were fired.